1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to foods and methods of food preparation, and more specifically to a composition and method for producing an improved microwaveable snack.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The snack food made from fried pork rinds, commonly known as "pork skins" or "cracklins", is well known and very popular. These pork rind snacks are typically prepared from small pork rind pellets that have been smoked and cured, which are then deep fried in lard or fat to pop and expand the pork rind pellet into a larger, low density snack food. These popped pork rind snacks may then be further seasoned, and are subsequently packaged for purchase by the consumer.
It is of course desirable to additionally provide the consumer with a snack food that can be prepared at home, as by heating in a microwave oven, for a fresher, hot and ready-to-eat product. However, attempts to heat and pop these pork rind pellets in standard microwave ovens have met with limited success. For example, simply heating a quantity of the pork rind pellets in a microwave oven often leaves many of the pellets unpopped and therefore wasted, as the uncooked pellets are essentially inedible. It has been determined that the pork rind pellets must be mixed and moved within the microwave oven while being heated to effectively pop the majority of the pellets into popped pork rind snacks. Unfortunately, such mechanical mixing is difficult or impossible to perform in most standard microwave ovens, and would require repeated interruption of the cooking process to manually mix the pork rind pellets in their container.